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It's that time again and once again thanks to everyone who took part especially the hard-core group who help make theses quizzes a success

Despite the difficulty level of both the quizzes we had a number of correct entries and surprisingly enough the shorter second quiz seemed to catch a lot of you out.
QUIZ A

Fastest entry received was again from Ryan - so well done Ryan.

It will be quite hard to pick an overall winner and although this might seem a bit unfair because he broke the rules slightly I am going to pick roObear as the winner simply for the fact that his layout scaled horizontally (and then vertically when he adjusted the JS). His layout also worked in IE7 as did a number of the other entries although it wan't required.

There were also some other good entries from Erik J, Centauri, frozenmyst and yurikolovsky and indeed the code was better in some of those entries but I liked the scalable version

The last batch of entries was also good but not quite as good as above. They were:Ryan, Raffles,MediumDeviation, Samanime.

I may have misled you when I said this was easy but it was only easy because I knew how to do it from the start as I had done somethng like tyhhis years ago. In fact this proved difficult for some of you as I had multiple incorrect entries.

The winners for this group are Eric J, and Eric Watson as they used similar methods followed by Centauri. They were in fact the only 3 to get to 100% correct.

I also had entries from Samanime and Raffles which replicated the desired visual effect but were not what I was looking for but they still deserve praise for solving it anyway.

The secret to solving this quiz was to put the anchor behind all the elements so that a background could be applied and then nest a span inside the anchor which was the set above all the elements so that the focus would remain above the text. Thiis was achieved with simple z-index manipulations.

The problem in IE6 was that when you hovered over any text the focus was lost and the hover effect switched off. The solution is to apply a background color to the span and then the hover is kept at the front. However this means the text is now rubbed out so intead we apply a fake background gif to the span instead of a color (i.e. an image that doesn't exist or an empty url) and this keeps the span in front of everything. (It's a technique I devised years ago to keep focus on dropdown menus in IE6.)

There are 2 other methods to keep focus and one is to used the transparent part of the dashed border (as we did in our logo competion) and the other is to use the proprietary IE opacity filter.

Thanks Paul for consistently taking the time to setup, explain, and post the the quizes, and then explaining the solution, and then posting all of the participents code. I could imagine that is a very time consuming process. So again, thank you! Not to mention, this collection of quizes is quickly becoming an invaluable resource!

for those who still don't understand, you need
to give the span inside the link a position and a z index
and to not give a position to the link itself, this way the parent z-index gets ignored and the span can be above anything.
so when you hover over the span, you are actually hovering over the link (because the span is inside the link), making the :hover css state activate and changing the background and border of the link, even tho it is under the text.
the span must then maintain the hover state, but because it is transparent ie ignores it, so
the span itself is transparent with a fake image or transparent border to maintain the links focus, in every browser.

@Ryan
and you said B was too easy! xD
@ErikJ
I love it how you put the link within the H2,
its not exactly as planned, but has its own positives.
@EricWatson
i love your invisible border
and its amazing that you got 3 different solutions for 1 problem.
@Centauri
you think like me, but a lot cleaner.

Feeble men excuse their faults; able men learn from them.
~Eric Watson

Good advice Eric!

Wisdom is acquired from experience and experience is cultivated with time.
The time you invest is the measure of your patience.
When you gain patience then quality triumphs over quantity.
When I was a young man I thought I knew it all, but I was lacking wisdom and patience.
Wisdom cannot be learned, it must be earned.
~Ray H.

ill disagree a little bit, as some people acquire wisdom faster than others, and some people never acquire any wisdom at all.

I do some voluntary work with the woodland trust. Ive only been doing it for a few months and it really amazes me that I know more about it than several people who have been doing it for 20 years! They just dont think about what they are doing and why, so wisdom doesnt always come with age or experience. Of course, as you would expect, some other people there who have been doing it for 20 years, know a lot more than me about it!

I do some voluntary work with the woodland trust. Ive only been doing it for a few months and it really amazes me that I know more about it than several people who have been doing it for 20 years! They just dont think about what they are doing and why, so wisdom doesnt always come with age or experience. Of course, as you would expect, some other people there who have been doing it for 20 years, know a lot more than me about it!

Pretty much in all cases, 95&#37;+ I'd say this applies which makes the statement still true. Though I don't even think *anyone* has been doing web development for 20 years as it was 19 years ago that TBL even proposed a "web of nodes".

Originally Posted by YuriKolovsky

ill disagree a little bit, as some people acquire wisdom faster than others, and some people never acquire any wisdom at all.

I agree with Ray's statement for the most part as a perfect demonstration was given a few posts ago, but there are always exceptions

dictionary: Wisdom
# accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment
# the trait of utilizing knowledge and experience with common sense and insight
# the quality of being prudent and sensible
# Knowledge with information so thoroughly assimilated as to have produced sagacity, judgment, and insight.

most people fail to accumulate knowledge
most people never use common sense (this is not a bad thing)
and very few people are prudent and sensible.
even small amounts of knowledge can produce sagacity, judgment and insight.

Off Topic: While we're on the subject of "quotes", I've got another good one for you!

The Secret of Happiness

The secret of happiness is feeling content with the grass that you are currently on (you know the saying - "the grass is always greener"). That's not to say that you shouldn't push yourself to higher plateaus, or seek out greater things in life. It just means that while your reaching for these higher places, to be fulfilled, and at peace with where you currently are in life. However, not complacent, otherwise what's to push you to that next life long goal. I believe it's all about striking a nice balance between the two. I personally have not, nor will I most likely ever truly accomplished this myself. However, be that as it may, that's the secret.
~Eric Watson